Source Sets / World History
Source set · 10 sources ✓ Lesson ready
What was new about the Renaissance?
Petrarch, Pico, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Erasmus, Machiavelli, Castiglione, and Vasari, with a Medici letter and a Dürer woodcut, let students test how much the Renaissance changed ideas about human potential, art, learning, and power, and how much it kept from the past.
Teach it
✓ Lesson readyA ready-to-run lesson for this set: Renaissance Stations: Rebirth or Continuity?. Slides include a hook, one slide per source, directions, a take-a-stand vote, an exit ticket, and a teacher script in the speaker notes.
1. Hook: a striking quote 3-5 min
The greatest gifts are often seen, in the course of nature, rained by celestial influences on human creatures
Giorgio Vasari, opening of the Life of Leonardo da Vinci (1550)
Ask: Is great talent a gift you are born with, or something built through work? What would a Renaissance artist say?
2. Main activity: Renaissance Stations: Rebirth or Continuity?
Grouping: Four stations, groups of 4 to 6, rotating every 7 minutes
Materials (printables are in the Lesson Plan Doc)
- Four station cards (printable pages in the Lesson Plan Doc), one per table
- Station recording sheet (in the Lesson Plan Doc)
- A two-column chart on the board: New in the Renaissance, Kept from the past
- Launch 3 min
Explain the stations: at each one students record what seems new and what was kept from the past. - Rotate 28 min
Four stations, 7 minutes each. Give a one-minute warning before each move. At Station 2, have students look closely at the Dürer woodcut before reading. - Fill the chart 7 min
Groups add evidence to the New and Kept columns. Ask: which column is longer? Did any source belong in both? - Take a stand 7 min
Use the vote slide. - Exit ticket 5 min
Students answer on a slip before leaving.
Take a stand: Was the Renaissance a true “rebirth” or mostly a continuation of the past?
- A true rebirth: Pico praises human freedom to shape oneself, Leonardo trusts experience over books, and Machiavelli writes about power as it is practiced.
- Mostly continuity: Petrarch looks back to Cicero, Pico writes as a Christian, Lorenzo’s letter is about a career in the Church, and Erasmus aims his satire at reforming Christian life.
3. Pacing options
15-minute bell-ringer
- 3 min Hook: Vasari on talent
- 8 min Run Station 2 only as a whole class: Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Vasari
- 4 min Exit ticket question 1
Full 50-minute lesson
- 4 min Hook: Vasari
- 3 min Launch the stations
- 28 min Four stations, 7 minutes each
- 7 min Fill the chart
- 5 min Vote and exit ticket
- 3 min Buffer
4. Exit ticket
- Name one idea from today’s sources that seems new in the Renaissance. Which source shows it, and how?
- Compare Vasari’s description of Leonardo with Michelangelo’s sonnet. What does each suggest about how great art gets made?
5. Differentiation
Support
- This set has no Adapted Docs yet; read key passages aloud or chunk them for struggling readers.
- Start struggling readers at Station 2, which has an image and short passages.
- Give the recording sheet with the author and date already filled in for each station.
- Word bank: humanism, classical, patron, courtier, satire, sprezzatura, woodcut, printing press.
Extension
- Pick one modern profession (athlete, politician, artist). Write two rules for it in the style of Castiglione and two in the style of Machiavelli.
- Find another print by Dürer in a museum collection. How did printing help an artist reach buyers who could never commission a painting?
Suggested sequence
- Petrarch (1304-1374): Selected Letters, c. 1372Letter · Fordham University · World: Medieval (500-1500) · Grades 6-8, 9-12 · ⏱ 20 minTranslated primary source: Petrarch (1304-1374): Selected Letters, c. 1372. Francis Petrarch: Familiar Letters (selections).Ask: What can this source tell us about life in its time and place?Open with this source to frame the question.
- Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486)Speech · Internet Medieval Sourcebook (Fordham University) · World: Medieval (500-1500) · Grades 6-8, 9-12 · ⏱ 10 minThe young Florentine scholar Pico wrote this oration to open a public debate in Rome. In its most famous passage, God tells Adam that humans alone have no fixed place in creation and may, by their own free choice, rise toward the divine or sink toward the beasts.Ask: What does Pico say makes human beings different from every other creature?
- Lorenzo de Medici (1449-1492): Paternal Advice to A Cardinal, c. 1491Document · Fordham University · World: Medieval (500-1500) · Grades 6-8, 9-12 · ⏱ 15 minTranslated primary source: Lorenzo de Medici (1449-1492): Paternal Advice to A Cardinal, c. 1491.Ask: What can this source tell us about life in its time and place?
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, from The Apocalypse (Germany, c. 1497/98)Image · Art Institute of Chicago · World: Medieval (500-1500) · Grades K-5, 6-8, 9-12 · ⏱ 5 minThe Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, from The Apocalypse, c. 1497/98, from Germany (Woodcut in black on ivory laid paper). Public-domain image from the Art Institute of Chicago collection.Ask: What can an object tell us about the beliefs and daily life of the people who made it?
- Leonardo da Vinci: Notebooks on Experience and Nature (c. 1490-1519)Notebook · Project Gutenberg (trans. Jean Paul Richter, 1888) · World: Early Modern (1450-1750) · Grades 6-8, 9-12 · ⏱ 8 minLeonardo’s private notebooks, written in mirror script, mix drawings, observations, and short sayings. In these notes he argues that experience, not the authority of books, is the true teacher, and defends himself against scholars who scorned him as an inventor without formal learning.Ask: Why does Leonardo trust experience more than the authority of books?
- Michelangelo: Sonnet on Painting the Sistine Chapel Ceiling (c. 1510)Poem · Project Gutenberg (trans. John Addington Symonds, 1878) · World: Early Modern (1450-1750) · Grades 6-8, 9-12 · ⏱ 5 minIn a humorous sonnet sent to his friend Giovanni da Pistoia, Michelangelo describes the physical strain of painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling for Pope Julius II: his neck bent back, paint dripping on his face, and his doubts about the work.Ask: What does Michelangelo’s sonnet show about the work behind a Renaissance masterpiece?
- The Praise of Folly (1511)Document · Fordham University · World: Early Modern (1450-1750) · Grades 9-12 · ⏱ 30 minThe Praise of Folly. A primary source from 1511, reproduced from Scanned by Jerome S. Arkenberg. It begins: "AS I WAS COMING awhile since out of Italy for England, that I might not waste all that time I was to..."Ask: Which practices of his day does Erasmus poke fun at, and why might he use humor instead of a direct attack?
- Machiavelli, The PrinceDocument · Fordham University · World: Early Modern (1450-1750) · Grades 6-8, 9-12 · ⏱ 30+ minThe full text of Machiavelli's 1513 guide to political power.Ask: Is it better for a leader to be loved or feared?
- Baldassare Castiglione: The Book of the Courtier (1528)Book · Project Gutenberg (trans. Leonard Eckstein Opdycke, 1903) · World: Early Modern (1450-1750) · Grades 6-8, 9-12 · ⏱ 12 minSet at the court of Urbino, this dialogue describes the ideal courtier: skilled in arms, letters, music, and painting, and able to do everything with a graceful ease Castiglione called sprezzatura (“nonchalance”) that hides the effort behind it. It became a guide to manners across Europe.Ask: What qualities does Castiglione say the ideal courtier needs, and why does he value “nonchalance”?
- Giorgio Vasari: Life of Leonardo da Vinci, from Lives of the Artists (1550)Biography · Project Gutenberg (trans. Gaston du C. de Vere, 1912-15) · World: Early Modern (1450-1750) · Grades 6-8, 9-12 · ⏱ 10 minThe painter and architect Vasari wrote the first great collection of artists’ biographies. His life of Leonardo opens by calling him a person in whom beauty, grace, and talent were united “beyond measure,” and helped create the idea of a “rebirth” of the arts in Italy.Ask: How does Vasari explain Leonardo’s talent, and why might he describe artists this way?Close with this source before writing.
Quick check
Five questions built only from this set’s sources: four multiple choice and one short answer. Print it or assign it in Google Classroom. The answer key gives the source line for every answer.
Preview the questions
- Which source in this set contains this passage? “I well know, that as you are now to reside in Rome, that sink of all iniquity, the difficulty of conducting yourself by these admonitions will be increased.”
- In his notebooks, what did Leonardo da Vinci say never errs?
- Which source in this set contains this passage? “Come then, Giovanni, try To succour my dead pictures and my fame; Since foul I fare and painting is my shame.”
- In The Prince, what did Machiavelli say is much safer for a ruler, if he must choose?
- Short answer: Choose two sources from this set. Using a specific detail from each, explain how they help answer the set’s question: “What was new about the Renaissance?” Write 3 to 5 sentences.
Culminating writing prompt
Using evidence from at least three sources in this set, write an argument that answers the question: “What was new about the Renaissance?” Cite each source by title, explain how its author, audience, and purpose affect its reliability, and respond to at least one counterargument.
Printable writing sheet (make a copy)
Students can plan with the Claim-Evidence-Reasoning organizer.